"If you break the song down, it's really not that original. But I thank God every day that I wrote it": How one radio play turned the Undertones' intended final release into a brand new beginning

The Undertones in 1978 (studio portrait).

It may be one of the most cherished recordings ever, but the story behind the release of The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks in 1978 is long on happy accidents.

Derry’s first punk band didn’t originally plan it to be the lead track on their debut EP (a record that itself was intended solely as an epitaph), and they even had to persuade their singer to rejoin the band just to do the recording. But when the late DJ John Peel (famously, the opening line from Teenage Kicks is inscribed on Peel's headstone) got to hear it, everything went a bit mad.